


Guardian Angel

by Kaurudim



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 13:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7936087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaurudim/pseuds/Kaurudim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riku had many friends in the hospital, but one of them left a lasting impression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardian Angel

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write something like this for a while. This is a little different from the initial impression, but I'm glad I put in the motivation to put words to virtual paper.

Sometimes, as our bodies drift off to sleep, the brain can’t keep up. Our muscles relax, our limbs turn into deadweight, and our brain feels fear. It forgets the bed beneath us and the sheep we might be counting, and jolts us awake in a full-body spasm because to it, we were in danger of falling down.

For most people, the shock lasts but a few seconds. After we confirm the bed is as solid as we remember and toss a bit to find a new position of comfort, sleep finds us again in a few minutes.

 _Most_ people.

Riku threw his legs over the side of the bed and groped blindly at his bedside table amidst his wheezing and coughing, confirming his inhaler was within reach. He didn’t want to resort to that yet; sleeping was always a little harder with that taste in his mouth. But he couldn’t escape from the falling sensation, he could feel something cold clawing at his back, and his coughing only got worse.

He closed his eyes, clutched at his chest, and forced his mind blank. This would be over if he just calmed down. If he just pushed the black out, just pushed the memory away, it would be all over.

He wasn’t like that for long before he registered his door slamming open, quick footsteps, and a comforting hand rubbing at his back.

“Nanase-san. You were fine at dinner, what on earth triggered this? Surely you weren’t just sleeping with the window open.”

Riku grasped at the gentle jibes, finding comfort in the words and actions as they grounded him to _now_. He opened his eyes again to find Iori’s face and discerning eyes only a hair’s breadth from his own, and tried to smile.

“I’m fine,” he tried to assure him, but his weak voice very clearly gave him away. Riku laughed weakly and stretched one hand out to Iori. It landed on his knee, and Riku squeezed gently.

“I…I got scared.”

“Scared?”

Riku nodded. He shifted his body to face Iori more directly, and gave one more squeeze.

“Hey, I know this sounds weird, but will you listen to a story?”

Iori’s eyes narrowed as they darted back and forth between Riku’s own.

“It’s getting late, Nanase-san. But…” Iori sighed, and fixed his own posture as well. “Well. If this will help you’ll calm down, I’ll entertain you.”

Riku’s smile was gentle…relieved, too. And something Iori wouldn’t have been able to place had Riku not told him just a minute earlier.

“This happened when I was young…I think I was about 7 years old? It was one of my longer hospital stays…”

——

“Ten-nii‼ Ten-nii, do that again!”

Ten bowed with a flourish, panting hard but never once letting his smile falter. Riku’s applause was loud and erratic, due mostly to stopping every few seconds to fumble around with the wireless monitor slung around his neck. But the applause soon faded and Riku’s coughing grew more severe, so Ten slowly raised from his bow and carefully approached the bed.

“Riku, it’s intermission. I’ll go get you something to drink.” Ten smiled as he gently messed with Riku’s hair, but he allowed himself a second to let it fall when Riku closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

Riku leaned back into the bed with a sigh for too long for someone so young.

“Okay! I’ll just talk to Mr. Angel.”

Ten was too afraid to ask. He left, his smile a little more forced than before.

**Your bro doesn’t like me.**

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s just a little weird when you can’t see anything.” Riku bounced a little on the hospital bed and turned to the corner behind where Ten had danced. Hiding in the shadows there, where the light from the setting sun could barely reach, was something almost human-like.

Mr. Angel, as Riku called him, was different from the other ghosts that Riku sometimes spied around the hospital wings when he was moved to the classroom or for various tests. He usually saw old men and women watching over family members, and he once saw a young woman trying to reach out to a baby in the NICU. Sometimes he saw younger children, too, and he would play with them for a little while until suddenly, they were gone.

A lot of them suddenly just disappeared like that, always crying, usually smiling.

Mr. Angel, though, was Riku’s longest friend. He was darker, somehow, like he was more _here_ than _there_. He was also much younger than most he had seen, with a full head of messy black hair and bright, sunken eyes. If Riku had to guess, he was probably a teenager. He wouldn’t tell Riku his name like so many others had, so Riku just gave him one based on his favorite part of him: the dark sprawling tendrils that he could use to lift things around the room, like magic. Riku couldn’t help but be entranced by the contrast they gave to the stark-white room. Sometimes they gathered behind his back into large, misshapen wings, and Riku couldn’t help but be envious of them. He had felt them once, too, and he still had the small mark around his wrist where the cold had burned him.

 **I still want to help you**. As he drew closer to the bed, the sunlight filtered through his form, making him almost ethereal.

“I know! But Mama always says I should be careful leaving my room.”

 **You’re a good kid to listen to Mama**. He was now at the side of the bed, leaning on the rails. A shadow flickered at the side of Riku’s vision. **But I would really like it if you came. This will fix everything, you can escape this hospital for good.**

Riku felt as if he just had to move. He leaned forward onto his hands and knees and slowly, haltingly, climbed off the bed and onto the floor. He saw the slippers by the bedside table and almost turned around to put them on…but no, he had to move.

“Tell me where to go,” he whispered. And as if waiting for those very words, Mr. Angel finally grinned.

 **Follow me, and I’ll set you free. I’ll give you wings**.

Mr. Angel deftly led Riku through hallways, avoiding nurses and doctors and other patients at almost every step of the way. At one point, they even passed the hall with all the vending machines, and Riku could see Ten carefully trying to decide which drinks would be best. He stopped here for the longest of seconds, his feet turned toward Ten for only a moment, before the impetus moving him forward picked up again.

His back was very cold.

Eventually, after traversing halls and ascending in empty elevators, they reached a staircase. Bright red letters that Riku couldn’t quite read were plastered in front of the door at the top, and it was only here that he found his last reservations.

“I dunno…red is usually bad.” He faltered backwards at the landing, but the black tendrils licking at the door and opening it had him impulsively step forward once more.

**Don’t worry. Hey, why don’t I tell you my name?**

“Really⁈” Riku walked forward onto the roof, staring up at his friend in awe.

**Yeah. Just call me Daichi.**

“Your name is like mine!” Riku was oblivious to the cold concrete below his feet as he spun around in the wind. The force behind him pushed him forward, until finally he arrived at the edge.

The chain link fence was broken here.

**Yes…that’s why I like you. You’re stuck on the ground, like I was. So I think we should just stay there forever.**

“Oh…I don’t really get it, but you kinda sound like the doctors. That’s not nice.”

**But if you listen to me…you can show them they’re wrong. You’ll be free, and they’ll know they were wrong.**

Riku’s hands grasped lightly at the edge of the ragged hole in the fence. He tiptoed closer. The force at his back was stronger now, and as he looked down at the ground…

“I can fly.”

**You can fly, even if they say you can’t. Just once…but you can fly. And you will be free from the hospital forever.**

Riku stepped up onto the small lip at the edge of the roof. His back was colder than it had ever been, but now he knew—they were wings. He could fly, just this once, if he just

_Riku!_

put one foot over the edge, he could walk on air

_Stop it!_

and show them all that he didn’t need to be trapped in this hospital forever. Everyone was so nice to him

_Please, don’t!_

but even he knew now that smiles were sometimes the most stifling thing, so he

_Riku‼_

stepped off the edge. His foot fell through.

His wings broke.

He was tugged back.

He heard a scream.

And everything faded to black.

——

Iori’s face grew paler as the story grew longer. Riku wasn’t surprised, of course, and almost wanted to stop; but just like back then he could feel something compelling him to finish the story.

“I found out later that the entire ward was looking for me.  That wireless monitor only worked within the ward, so when it suddenly stopped sending my vitals, everyone started running.  No one thought a kid would go to the roof, but apparently Ten-nii saw me when he was on the way back to the hospital room,” Riku fiddled with the hem of his shirt as he spoke. “He said I looked like I was sleepwalking, but then he heard me talking…”

Iori swallowed. “Did Kujou-san…?”

“He knew…I talked about ghosts before, but because they were never there for very long, he didn’t mind.”

Riku went silent for a moment, before continuing even quieter than before.

“Apparently Daichi…apparently that hole in the fence was something he made. He was a terminal patient in the same ward I was in, and he…he killed himself there, a few months before.”

“Nanase-san…”

“I don’t hate him, you know! I don’t think I could. I think…I was so young, but I think…I knew how he felt. Right then, on the roof.”

Iori leaned in closer. It was all he could do, all he could ever hope to do. To just _be there_ when words wouldn’t ever be enough in a situation like this.

“Was it Kujou-san that saved you?”

Riku nodded once. “And it was his scream I heard when I passed out. It took about a year for him to talk about it, but when he finally did, he said…”

Riku took in a deep breath, and averted his gaze. His eyes glazed over, lost in the memory, and he reached a hand behind him to press on his shoulder blades.

“He said when he grabbed me, he saw something large and black digging into my back.”

Iori nudged Riku lightly on the arm to force his attention back on him. When Riku looked back up he was met with a small smile, and a pat on the back.

“There’s nothing there. And it’s quite warm.”

“You believe me?”

“You have no reason to lie about this. And based on your expression alone,” Iori’s voice softened as his thumb made small circles through the fabric of Riku’s shirt, “this is something that still bothers you.”

Riku’s eyes began overflowing with tears—tears he had never let go since he nearly fell off the roof, tears he didn’t know were just waiting to be shed. This was the one and only time Ten had refused to listen to him while they were growing up, and finally letting it all out, in his own words, gave Riku the kind of relief he had always wanted.

“Will you be fine here for a moment? I’m going to make us some drinks.” Iori stood up from the bed, and Riku sorely missed the warmth and proximity. Nevertheless, he nodded once more, and Iori headed to the door.

“Nanase-san…”

“Hm?”

Iori turned around just enough to look at Riku, his hand still on the doorknob.

“I know I may not be a replacement for Kujou-san. But I promise to catch you when you fall.”

Iori left immediately, not bothering to wait for Riku’s response. Well, that was fine…he would have to take it when he came back with the drinks, anyway. Riku wiped away his tears, and whispered quietly to no one in particular.

“I know. You gave me real wings.”

**Author's Note:**

> Daichi and Riku both have names related to earth/ground.
> 
> Also, the ward-specific monitor is totally a real thing, I had one when I was hospitalized...idk if children's wards actually use them too, tho.
> 
> (also 100% not beta'd, pls let me know of any mistakes you notice)


End file.
